Renowned lawyer and scholar, Tsatsu Tsikata, has asserted that Ghanaians should not be too concerned about the country’s youth leaving in droves to seek greener pastures abroad – brain drain.

According to him, brain drain is not necessarily a bad thing because it presents opportunities to the youth who are leaving the country, myjoyonline.com reports.

He said that this is not the first time people are leaving the country in huge numbers, adding that brain drain also has economic benefits.

"In my mind, yes, there is a brain drain, and some people are desperate to leave the country, and this is not the first time people have left the country in droves. It has happened before.

"So, I don’t spend too much time worrying about the fact that there is that brain drain and pressure on some young people who think they need to move on. This is because I sense an opportunity in this," he is quoted as having said at the 14th Leadership Dialogue organised by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

The legal luminary added that “the Ghanaians in the diaspora have a certain relationship with Ghana that can be cultivated because it is economically valuable.”

He also indicated that the revenues Ghanaians living abroad send are also very important to the country’s economy and even far outweigh the contribution of other sectors.

“When you look at the amount of remittances that are sent by Ghanaians abroad, in terms of foreign exchange, it usually exceeds any of these natural resources that we export,” he stated.

He also suggested that the country must rather put in measures to get more resources from Ghanaians who travel abroad for its development.

“Let’s look at the fact that we can harness the resource value that comes from their being there.”

BAI/OGB

Meanwhile, catch up on GhanaWeb's interview with Dr. Nana Ato Arthur, Head of the Local Government Service, as he explains the procedures involved in undertaking projects that are originally government projects. He spoke with Etsey Atisu on The Lowdown:





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